Raids on illegal internet service providers in Noida and Ghaziabad, 6 held

The raids and arrests were conducted by four teams at six locations in Ghaziabad, Noida and Greater Noida. The team seized servers, switches, routers, mobile towers and account details of the illegal operators.

Officials said the operators who don’t have requisite licences are not only a threat to security but also causing huge loss to the exchequer.

According to UP-ATS officials, the raids were conducted at several premises under Mamura, Greater Noida, Khoda police station areas. The officials said that they arrested Nand Kishor, Rohit Yadav, Shahnawaz, Manoj Rai, Pramod Shukla and Jai Prakash Singh in connection with the illegal operations.

The raids and arrests were conducted by four teams at six locations in Ghaziabad, Noida and Greater Noida.

The team seized servers, switches, routers, mobile towers and account details of the illegal operators.

“Initial investigation has shown that these operators were procuring services from bigger internet service providers (ISPs) who also had no licenses from department of telecommunication. In one instance, we came to know about such an ISP in Delhi. In all, we have arrested six people who were operating such illegal firms and providing internet and broadband services to customers in Ghaziabad, Greater Noida and Noida,” said Anup Singh, deputy superintendent of police (UP-ATS).

The officials said some of the firms against which action was taken are Bhoomi, Altranat, Advance net, Vanshika and Laxmi. Complaints have also been forwarded to Phase III, Sector-20, Khoda and Kasna police stations against the accused persons.

“Apart from the relevant sections under the different laws, the operators will also be booked for forgery and cheating. One such operator had nearly 4,000 customers. Since it is preliminary information, we estimate other illegal operators might have a similar number of clients,” Singh said.

The officials said to be an ISP one must have a licence from the Department of Telecommunications. They said the illegal operators also violated the monitoring and content blocking clauses, besides not adhering to regulations and security terms and conditions laid down under the law.